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James Corbett, Inside World Football

Saturday, December 30, 2017

In supporting recent anti-government
protests in Iran, both Iranian hardliners and the US State Department may
want to be careful what they wish for. Not only are the protests unlikely to
spark the kind of change either of the two adversaries may be hoping for, they
also are refusing to stick to the different scripts the Trump administration
and opponents of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani read into them.

For Iranian hardliners, the joker in the pack is what US
President Donald J. Trump decides in January to do with the 2015 international
agreement that put curbs on Iran’s nuclear program. Mr. Trump will have to again
choose whether to certify Iranian compliance as well as extend the temporary
waiver of US sanctions on Iran. In October, Mr. Trump refused to certify and threatened
to pull out of the agreement if Congress failed to address the agreement’s
perceived shortcomings.

Members of Congress have
been trying to draft legislation that would give Mr. Trump a face-saving way of
maintaining the agreement by claiming that Iranian compliance ensures includes acceptance
of restrictions on the country’s ballistic missile program and support of
regional proxies. It was not clear whether Washington’s deeply polarized
politics would allow for a meeting of the minds of Republicans and Democrats. Iranian
hardliners would be strengthened if Mr. Trump failed to maintain US adherence
to the agreement and would likely see it as a US breach of the accord.

In a statement condemning the arrests of protesters, State
Department spokeswoman Heather Nauer projected the demonstrations as a bid
to change Iranian politics. She urged “all nations to support the Iranian
people and their demands for basic rights and an end to corruption.” In a
reflection of a strand of thinking in Washington that is looking for ways
change the regime in Iran, Ms. Nauert quoted US Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson as telling Congress that the Trump administration supports “those
elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of the
government.”

For his part, Mr. Trump
tweeted that the “Iranian govt should respect their people's rights, including
right to express themselves. The world is watching!”

Mr. Trump and Ms. Nauert appeared oblivious to the fact that
unlike the 2009 mass protests against alleged fraud in presidential elections, the
largest since the 1979 toppling of the Shah that were dubbed a Green revolution
and brutally squashed, this month’s demonstrations may have been in part prompted
by a hard-line effort to exploit widespread discontent to undermine Mr. Rouhani.

If so, Iranian hardliners may be overestimating their
ability to ensure that the protesters in a host of Iranian towns and cities, whose
numbers range from several hundred to a few thousand, restrict themselves to
taking the government to task on economic policy, particularly price hikes and
fraudulent financial schemes that have deprived victims of their savings.

No doubt, the protests reflect widespread grievances,
particularly among the Islamic republic’s working and lower middle classes.
Expectations that the benefits of the lifting of crippling international sanctions
as part of the nuclear agreement would trickle down have so far been dashed. Many
criticized on social media a widely debated new
government budget that cut social spending but maintained allocations for
religious and revolutionary institutions. Many also objected to a hiking of the
exit tax that Iranians pay to travel abroad.

The Iranian economy has since
the lifting of sanctions emerged from recession, but businesses still suffer a
lack of investment while the official unemployment rate has increased by 1.4
percent to 12.7 percent despite economic growth. The government’s policy of
allowing Iran’s currency to devalue has fuelled inflation and driven up prices
of basic goods like eggs that recently rose by 40 percent.

Nonetheless, the anti-systemic nature of some of the
protesters’ slogans speaks to the fact that popular grievances are not purely
economic. Many question the government’s investment of billions of dollars in
struggles in places like Syria and Yemen as part of its bid to enhance the
Islamic republic’s regional position and compete with Saudi Arabia for regional
dominance – a policy supported by the hardliners. They feel that the funds
could be better employed to improve the economy.

The first protests in the latest round of demonstrations erupted
on Friday in Mashhad,
Iran’s second largest city, that is home to conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi,
who was Mr. Rouhani’s main challenger in last May’s presidential election.
Mashhad is also home to Mr. Raisi’s father-in-law, Ayatollah
Ahmad Alamolhoda, a hard-line Friday prayer leader and former prosecutor
general and an opponent of Mr. Rouhani’s cautious loosening of strict social
mores and encouragement of greater cultural space.

Mr. Alamolhoda charged that the anti-regime slogans came
from a small group that was trying to disrupt the protest. The protests erupted
almost to the day on the eighth anniversary of the Green Revolution. The latest
round built on weeks of smaller
protests focused on issues ranging from unpaid wages to bank fraud and
embezzlement to environmental issues that appeared to have no connection to any
one political group in Iran.

Protesters in Mashhad took to the streets a day after the
police chief in the capital Tehran announced that women would no longer be
detained or prosecuted for failing to observe strict dress codes imposed
immediately after the 1979 revolution. The police chief said violators of the
code would receive counselling instead. Younger, more liberal women have long
been pushing the envelope on rules that obliged them to cover their hair and
wear long, loose garments.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the policy
change. Domestic pressure was certainly one driver, but so may have been a
desire to compete with Saudi Arabia whose crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman,
has grabbed headlines with lifting social and cultural restrictions with
measures like a lifting of the ban on women’s driving and creating an
entertainment sector.

Iranian-American poet and journalist Roya Hakakian argued in
a recent op-ed
that Iranian and Saudi women had benefited from “competition between the two
regimes to earn the mantle of the modern moderate Islamic alternative.”

A litmus test of Ms. Hakakian’s assertion may be whether
Iran follows Saudi Arabia in lifting a ban on women attending male sporting
events. An Iranian sports scholar said in a private exchange with this writer
that individual women had slipped into soccer matches in Tehran in recent days
dressed up as men. A female
protester took off her hijab in one of the recent demonstrations in protest
against the dress codes.

The Trump administration’s emphasis on the anti-systemic
nature of some of the protests and the hardliners loss of control of
demonstrations that they allegedly hoped would focus solely on squeezing Mr.
Rouhani takes on added significance with the fate of the nuclear accord hanging
in the balance. Hardliners have long opposed
the deal because it restricts Iran’s military capability, threatens the vested
interests of the Revolutionary Guards and other hardliners, and has not
produced expected economic benefits.

The anti-government protests may well constitute a hard-line
effort to set the stage for a potential confrontation with the US. If so,
protesters have so far not followed the script. The protests, while spreading
across the country, have failed to mushroom into truly mass demonstrations and
could well turn as much on the hardliners as they target Mr. Rouhani.

By the same token, a US pull-out from the nuclear agreement
could fuel increasing nationalist sentiment in Iran that could prove to be a
double-edged sword, particularly for Iranian hardliners.

Revolutionary
Guard media personnel gathered in 2011 to discuss the waning appeal to
Iranian youth of the hard-liners’ religious rhetoric and opted for nationalism
as a way of bridging the gaps in society that had become evident in the 2009 protests.

“The youngest generation in our country doesn’t understand
our religious language anymore. We’re wasting our time with the things we make.
They don’t care about it. That’s why so many of them were in the streets
protesting against our system,” a Guards captain told the gathering.

If the protests in recent days prove anything, it is that the
nationalism fostered by the Guards and other arms of the government could well
take off in unintended directions. That may unintentionally serve US policy
goals. It could also spark a much harsher crackdown and a solidifying of hard-line
power.

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Saudi Arabia’s hosting of an international
chess tournament focuses attention on the fundamental problem wreaking
havoc in international sports governance and shines a spot light on the limitations
of covert Saudi-Israeli cooperation in confronting Iran and political Islam and
the Palestinians’ ability to be a game spoiler.

By seducing the World Chess Federation (FIDE) to grant the
kingdom hosting rights with a $1.5 million check that amounted to four times
the federation’s standard annual fee, Saudi Arabia joined the likes of Qatar
and the United Arab Emirates in using sports to polish its troubled
international image.

The Saudi effort comes at a time that Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman is seeking to convince Saudis, the kingdom’s allies, and foreign
investors that he is diversifying and reforming the economy and transforming a
nation imbued by Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism into a 21st
century, knowledge-driven state.

The tournament takes place almost two years after the
kingdom’s grand mufti and top religious authority, Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh,
opined that Islam forbids chess as a form of gambling and a waste of time.

The Saudi bid faced two obstacles: strict dress codes for
women and Israeli participation. The way the kingdom sought to overcome the
obstacles says much about Prince Mohammed’s approach and the limits of his
ability to introduce change.

Women’s dress codes proved easiest to address and served to
highlight Prince Mohammed’s moves to increase women’s participation in the work
force, lift a ban on women’s driving, and grant women access to male sporting
events in a limited number of stadiums.

Saudi Arabia’s concession on women’s dress codes for the
chess tournament mirrored the limited nature of Prince Mohammed’s reforms for
women that failed to challenge the core of discriminatory practices in the
kingdom: male guardianship that gives men the power to decide for women.

Similarly, in a country that insists on women being fully
covered, female participants in the chess tournament are not entitled to dress
the way they may want to. Instead, they can avoid the hijab by wearing
dark blue or black formal trousers and a high-necked blouse.

Allowing at least seven Israelis to participate in the
tournament would have been far trickier. It would have been the first time that
Israelis would have officially been allowed to travel to Saudi Arabia and would
inevitably have been seen as yet another indication of increasingly close, albeit
covert, ties between the kingdom and Israel.

Saudi
Arabia’s refusal to grant the Israelis visas demonstrated that an Israeli
presence would have been a bridge too far. It would have added to mounting
indications that Saudi Arabia has been willing
to compromise on minimal Palestinian conditions for an Israeli-Palestinian
peace, including control of East Jerusalem, in its effort to work with Israel
in confronting Iran and political Islam.

The refusal’s underlining of the sensitivities evoked by
Palestine is all the starker when contrasted with Saudi Arabia’s willingness to
grant
entry to a player representing Qatar despite the fact that the kingdom six
months ago cut off all economic, diplomatic and air, sea and land links to the
Gulf state in a so far failed bid to force it align its foreign and defense
policy with that of its bigger brother.

By refusing the visas, Saudi Arabia demonstrated that the
Palestinian issue may not be the root of the Middle East’s multiple problems,
but that its resolution is a sine qua non for normalizing Israel’s relations with
much of the Arab and Muslim world and facilitating cooperation and the pursuit
of perceived common interests.

The refusal also shielded the kingdom from possible
controversy during the tournament if some players refused to sit at a chess board
with an Israeli. A unidentified
Palestinian champion had already declared that he would refuse to play an
Israeli. “We are not in a normal situation with Israel, so I can’t act as if it
is,” the player said.

If other recent sporting events are anything to go by, more
players may well have adopted a similar attitude. Saudi judoka Joud
Fahmy bowed out of the first round of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro
to avoid competing against Israel’s Gili Cohen. The Saudi Olympic committee
declared at the time that Ms. Fahmy had suffered injuries during training.

The sensitivity of projecting normalcy in relations with
Israel was also evident in October when Israelis participated in the Abu Dhabi
Grand Slam judo tournament. Israelis took part as representatives of the
International Judo Federation rather than their country, and were banned from
displaying national symbols.

Ironically, the UAE is the only Arab country to host an Israeli embassy,
even if it is not accredited to the Emirates, but to the Abu Dhabi-based International
Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). The embassy, nonetheless, is Israel’s
diplomatic presence in the Gulf.

All of this, coupled with some national chess federations
and players protesting against FIDE’s decision to grant Saudi Arabia hosting
rights despite its human rights record and refusal to ensure all qualified
players would be able to participate, testifies to the inextricable relationship
between sports and politics.

Literally everything involving Saudi Arabia’s hosting of a
chess tournament is political. The very fact that Saudi Arabia is the host is
political. FIDE’s decision to look the other way in exchange for a financial
contribution when it comes to access for players and women’s rights is
political. Saudi Arabia’s visa policy is political as is the kingdom’s willingness
to concede on women’s dress.

Yet, FIDE like all other international sports federations denies
that there is any link between sport and politics. The denials enable a world
in which political corruption is at the root of sports’ multiple scandals involving
financial and performance corruption and in which transparency and
accountability are rare quantities.

The chess tournament in Saudi Arabia like the judo
competition in the UAE suggests that an ungoverned relationship between sports
and politics raises not only fundamental problems of governance but impinges on
players’ rights. The chess tournament also suggests that it takes much more
than a sporting event for a country to successfully polish its tarnished image.

Saturday, December 23, 2017

Incarcerated for almost two months in a gilded cage in
Riyadh’s luxurious Ritz Carlton Hotel, Saudi billionaire businessman Prince
Al-Waleed bin Talal appears to be putting up a fight that could challenge
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s assertion that his two month-old purge of
scores of members of the ruling family, senior officials, and businessmen constitutes
a campaign against corruption.

Many of those detained in Prince Mohammed’s purge, dubbed by
critics as a power and asset grab dressed up as an anti-corruption
effort, have bought their release by agreeing to surrender significant
assets. The government has said it hopes to recover up to $100
billion in allegedly illegitimately acquired funds and assets.

Prince
Mutaib bin Abdullah, a favoured son of the late King Abdullah who was deposed
as commander of the National Guard in a bid to neutralize the Saudi crown
prince’s most potent rival, secured his release by agreeing
to pay $1 billion and signing a document in which he confessed to charges
of corruption.

In what appears to be the largest settlement demand, Prince
Al-Waleed has, according to The
Wall Street Journal, resisted pressure by the government to hand over $6
billion.

Instead, the prince has reportedly offered the government a significant
stake in his Riyadh-listed Kingdom Holding that has invested in blue chips such
as Citibank, Twitter, Four Seasons hotels, and Disney, and operates a media and
entertainment empire. Kingdom Holding has lost 14 percent of its $8.7 billion
market value since Prince Al-Waleed’s detention. The prince has also insisted
that he retain a leadership position in his conglomerate.

With a fortune estimated by Forbes
at $16.8 billion, Prince Al-Waleed reportedly believes that the cash settlement
demanded by the government would put his empire at peril and amount to an
admission of guilt.

That may indeed be the purpose of the exercise. A social
reformer, who already years ago implemented within his own company changes of
women’s status announced in recent months by Prince Mohammed, is Saudi Arabia’s
most prominent entrepreneur who is continuously welcomed around the world by
heads of state and government and business moguls.

The son of Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz, a liberal nicknamed
the Red Prince, who in the 1960s and again in the first decade of the 21st
century publicly criticized his family’s rule, Prince Al-Waleed is believed to
have no political ambitions.

In resisting Prince Mohammed’s demands, Prince Al-Waleed is
challenging an opaque and seemingly arbitrary process in which despite
assertions by the government that it has conducted extensive investigations and
collected substantial evidence of corruption, bribery, money laundering and
extortion, there has been little, if any, discernible due process and no proof publicly
presented.

Quoting sources close to Prince Al-Waleed, The Wall Street
Journal reported that the businessman was demanding a proper investigation and
was willing to fight it out in court. “He wants a proper investigation. It is
expected that al-Waleed will give MBS a hard time,” the Journal quoted a person
close to Prince Al-Waleed as saying. The person was referring to Prince
Mohammed by his initials.

A court battle would put the government’s assertions of due
process to the test and would also shine a spotlight on the integrity of Saudi
Arabia’s judicial system. The risk involved in a legal battle is that the charges
levelled against Prince Al-Waleed and others were common practice in a kingdom
in which there were no well-defined rules governing relationships between
members of the ruling family and the government as well as ties between princes
and princesses who wielded influence and businessmen.

There is little doubt that Prince Mohammed’s purge is
popular among significant segments of the population, half of which is
classified as low-
or middle-income families, that has long resented the elite’s seemingly
unbridled perks.

Prince Mohammed has so far been shielded against questions
of the source of his own wealth and that of his tack of the ruling family. Several
immediate relatives of Prince Mohammed were last year identified in the Panama Papers leaked from the files
of a law firm in the Central American nation that handled offshore business and
transactions by the world’s mega-rich.

Media reports have since suggested that the prince had spent
in recent years $1.25
billion on a $500 million yacht, a $300 million mansion in France, and a
$450 million Leonardo da Vinci painting. Prince Mohammed has denied
buying the art work that was acquired by a close associate of his allegedly on
behalf of the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism.

Shining the spotlight on the anti-corruption campaign in a
legal battle with Prince Al-Waleed would come at a time that the government is
unilaterally rewriting the kingdom’s social contract that involved a
cradle-to-grave-welfare state in exchange for surrender of political rights and
acceptance of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservative and Bedouin moral codes.

The government this week paid $533 million into a newly
established social welfare fund to help families offset the cost of the
imminent introduction of a five-percent value-added tax on goods including food,
and services, as well as subsidy cuts that would substantially raise the price
of electricity and gasoline. The government was forced earlier this year to
reverse a freeze on public sector wage increases and perks and slowdown its
austerity program because of anger and frustration expressed on social media.

Labor and Social Development Minister Ali al-Ghafees told
the state-run Saudi Press Agency that approximately three million families or
10.6 million beneficiaries had already been paid the maximum relief of 938 Saudi
riyals ($250) out of the newly created fund.

The government, moreover, this month announced a $19bn
stimulus package that includes subsidised loans for house buyers and
developers, fee waivers for small businesses and financial support for
distressed companies. It also presented its new
budget involving record spending in which funding of defense outstrips that
of education in a country with a 12.7
percent unemployment rate. A Bank
of America Merrill Lynch report predicted last year that youth unemployment
could jump from 33.5 to 42 percent by 2030.

Prince Mohammed is banking on continued public support for
his economic and social reforms, and on the fact that once the dust has settled
foreign investors will forget whatever misgivings they may have had about the lack
of due process and absence of rule law in the anti-corruption crackdown.
Foreign diplomats in the kingdom noted that the businesses of those detained or
penalized continued to operate and that no foreign interests were caught up in
the purge.

However, to maintain his popularity, Prince Mohammed will
have to manage expectations, deliver jobs, continue to massage the pain of
austerity and the introduction of a new social contract, and ensure that the
public continues to perceive his purge as an anti-corruption campaign in which
the high and mighty are no longer above the law.

A legal battle with Prince Al-Waleed that publicly puts to
the test the government’s assertions could upset the apple cart. That may be
the leverage Prince Al-Waleed hopes will work in his favour as he negotiates
his settlement from the confines of the Ritz Carlton.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Based on remarks at a 19 December 2017 NUS Middle East
Institute seminar

The Middle East being the Middle East, everything is
interrelated. What happens in the region impacts Yemen and what happens in
Yemen impacts the region. The crisis in Yemen, like many conflicts in the
Middle East, did not originate with the power struggle between Saudi Arabia and
Iran, but inevitably get sucked into it.

Yemen was a Saudi problem long before it took on the mantle
of a Saudi-Iranian proxy war and it may be the conflict that is most important
and most sensitive for the kingdom. It also may be the proxy war that comes to
haunt Saudi Arabia the most. Beyond cross-border tribal relationships, Yemen, a
devastated country where recovery and reconstruction is certain to be a slow
process, is likely to have a next generation that will be deeply resentful of
Saudi Arabia with all the political and security implications that go with
that.

More immediately, two recent factors stick out that
potentially have significant geopolitical consequences. First, the
recent meeting between the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed, with leaders of
Yemen’s Islamist Islah party in the wake of the killing of former Yemeni
president Ali
Abdullah Saleh. The presence of Mohammed bin Salman at the meeting was far
less remarkable than that of Mohammed bin Zayed and it is not clear what it
means. It is Mohammed bin Zayed rather than Mohammed bin Salman who is truly
uncomfortable with any expression of political Islam and certainly with any
link to the Muslim Brotherhood. Islah remains an Islamist party even if it
announced in 2013 that it had cut its ties to the Brotherhood.

The question is whether Mohammed bin Zayed, who for the
almost three years of the Yemen war opposed Saudi cooperation with Islah, sees
an alliance with the party as an opportunistic one-off move or whether it signals
a shift in policy that could be repeated elsewhere in the Middle East. If so,
that would have consequences for the dispute with Qatar and there is no sign of
that. In fact, Saudi Arabia signalled days after the meeting that there was
likely to be no quick end to the dispute with Qatar by declaring its closed
border crossing with the Gulf state permanently shut. Similarly, recent
satellite pictures show that the UAE air force is gearing up for greater
military engagement against Islamists in Libya. As a result, the
significance of the meeting is likely to be limited to Yemen.

Nonetheless, the way the meeting was arranged is significant
and tells a story that goes far beyond Yemen. The crown princes sent a private
plane to Istanbul to pick up the Islah party representatives from an Islamic
summit called to discuss US President Donald J. Trump’s decision to recognize
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. It was a summit the two men decided not to
attend and at which they were represented by lower officials. The message was:
Jerusalem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not their priority and their
opposition to Mr. Trump’s move was skin deep. Their priority was the war in
Yemen and the larger regional battle with Iran for dominance of the region.

In some ways, Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s risky strategy has
already backfired. It has given the Brotherhood,
violently suppressed in Egypt, outlawed in much of the Gulf and marginalized
elsewhere in the region, a new lease on life. Mr. Trump’s decision offered the
Brotherhood an issue to rally around in an Arab world intimidated and cowed by
the violence, repression, insurgencies and civil wars that have characterized
it since the 2011 popular Arab revolts that toppled the leaders of Tunisia,
Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

With a long history of opposition to a US-mediated
Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Brotherhood has emerged in the front
lines of many of the protests against the president’s recognition of Jerusalem.
Muslim Brothers organized the biggest popular protest in Jordan in a decade and
demanded the closure of the Israeli embassy in Amman. Beyond leading
demonstrations in Kuwait, Brother members of parliament called on the
government to review its ties with Washington and disinvest from the United
States.

Mr. Trump’s move has also
strengthened Brotherhood offshoots like Hamas, the Islamist group that controls
the Gaza Strip. Confronted with protests against its inability to break a
crippling, economic stranglehold by Egypt, Israel and the Palestine Authority
that starved the Strip of electricity and forced government workers to go
unpaid for months, Hamas was forced by the UAE and Egypt to enter into a
reconciliation agreement with Palestinian President Mahmoud’s Abbas’ Al Fatah
movement and entertain an independent governance position for powerful but controversial,
Abu Dhabi-backed former Palestinian security chieftain Mohammed
Dahlan.

The second factor are Houth
ballistic missile strikes, including the firing in November of a projectile at
the international airport of the Saudi capital Riyadh, subsequent claims and
denials of a Houthi missile fired towards the UAE, the December
2017 targeting of the Al Yamama palace of the Saudi royal court as King
Salman and Prince Mohammed were chairing a meeting of the kingdom’s leaders,
and the Houthi threat of further attacks. A Saudi
military spokesman said the kingdom had intercepted 83 ballistic missiles
since the Yemen war started almost three years ago.

There is little doubt that the
Saudi-UAE intervention in Yemen has fortified ties between the Houthis and Iran.
Yet the recent theatrical
display of Houthi missile parts and other weaponry that was made possible
by Saudi Arabia and the UAE left their provenance in doubt. There was no
smoking gun that established beyond doubt that Iran could be held responsible
for the missile strikes. The missiles and other items could well have
originated in Iran, they could also have come from elsewhere. Whether supplied
by Iran or not, United
Nations monitors reported to the Security Council that remnants of
ballistic missiles launched into Saudi Arabia by Houthi rebels appeared to have
been designed and produced by Iran.

Iran insisted that it had not supplied the missiles, but
said it would continue to support the Houthis and other “resistance forces” in
the region. “Victory in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen will continue as long as
the resistance coalition defends its achievements. And as long as necessary, we
will have a presence in these countries… We must assist these countries and
establish a barrier against the American influence,” said Ali
Akbar Velayati, a senior aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and
former foreign minister.

Mr. Velayati’s remarks appeared to contradict Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani’s denial that Iran had a military presence in Yemen
and was assisting the Houthis. So did an earlier admission by Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Mohammad
Ali Jafari that Iran was providing the Houthis with “advisory military
assistance,” the phrase the Islamic republic used for its support of militias
in Syria and Iraq.

Evidence of Iranian military support for the Houthis has
been mounting. The Australian government released in
January pictures of anti-armour weapons that were seized off the Yemeni coast and
had been manufactured in Iran. A report
in late 2016 by Conflict Armament Research concluded that a weapons pipeline
extended from Iran to Yemen as well as Somalia that involved “transfer, by
dhow, of significant quantities of Iranian-manufactured weapons and weapons
that plausibly derive from Iranian stockpiles.”

The Houthis, a fiercely independent actor have, irrespective
of the degree of Iranian support, repeatedly demonstrated, however, that they
do not take orders from Tehran and at times ignore its advice. Iran opposed the
Houthi move on the Yemeni capital of Sana’a to no avail and was against a
Houthi advance in the south. The Houthis could well against Iran’s will throw
another monkey wrench into the fragile Middle East mix if they continue to target
Saudi and/or Emirati cities. The attacks would ultimately elicit a harsh
response. The question is who would respond and what would the target be.

The answer seems at first glance obvious. It would be a
Saudi and/or UAE response and the target would be the Houthis in Yemen. The deployment
of a new, American-trained and supplied Saudi National Guard helicopter unit to
the kingdom’s border with Yemen suggests an escalation of the Saudi-UAE
campaign. The Pentagon
said 36 AH-64E Apaches, 36 AH-6i Little Birds, and 72 Sikorsky UH-60M
Blackhawks bought from the US at a cost of $25 billion would be used to protect
Saudi Arabia’s borders and oil infrastructure. The deployment constitutes the
first expansion of the Guard’s mission beyond protecting the ruling Al Saudi
family, guarding oil facilities, and providing security for the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina since Prince
Mutaib bin Abdullah, a son of former King Abdullah, was relieved of his
command of the Guard in November and detained
by Prince Mohammed on corruption charges alongside other princes, senior
officials and prominent businessmen.

The retaliatory target could, however, also be Iran and the
response could be one in which the United States participates. The implications
of such an escalation could be massive. “An Iranian missile fired at Riyadh
sheds light on an important bottom line dynamic in the region: the Saudis have
a far superior air force, defence system and navy than the Iranians. They have
a better equipped military intelligence apparatus and far superior munitions… (Iran)
has been wreaking havoc in the Middle East on its own terms and drawing on its
own strengths. It must realise that such recklessness could cause its regional
adversaries to draw on their competitive advantages,” said Middle East analyst Mohammed
Alyahya.

A broader regional military altercation would occur at a
moment that emotions are raw in the wake of Mr. Trump’s decision on Jerusalem
and because protesters are already on the streets of various Middle Eastern
cities. A strike against Iran involving the United States could turn fury about
Mr. Trump’s Jerusalem decision against Arab leaders who would be seen to be
cooperating with the United States and willing to sacrifice Palestinian rights
to work with Israel. Soccer
fans in Algiers who were protesting against the decision recently provoked
Saudi Arabia’s ire by carrying placards depicting Mr. Trump and Saudi King
Salman as two sides of the same coin. While the protests in recent week were
primarily directed against the United States and Israel, they often had an
undertone of criticism of Arab regimes that were seen to be meek in their
response to Mr. Trump’s decision or in cahoots with the United States.

Ironically, differences among Arab leaders about how to
respond to Trump’s Jerusalem decision may have temporarily prevented the Saudi
Crown Prince from adding Palestine to a string of failed foreign policy moves
aimed at escalating the kingdom’s proxy war with Iran. Prince Mohammed’s
devastating intervention in Yemen, botched effort to force Lebanese Prime
Minister Saad Hariri to resign, and hamstrung boycott of Qatar have backfired and
only strengthened the Islamic republic’s regional influence.

Inadvertently,
Palestinian President Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah did Prince Mohammed
a favour when they reportedly rejected pressure by the prince not to
participate in the summit of Islamic countries in Istanbul. Mr. Abbas may have
further shielded the Saudi leader when his refusal to further accept the United
States as a mediator was adopted by the summit.

The two leaders’ stand, coupled with the summit’s rejection
of Trump’s move, make it more difficult for Saudi Arabia and the UAE to endorse
any resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that does not recognize East
Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. The problem is that the Saudi and UAE
crown princes run the risk of misreading or underestimating public anger and
frustration in significant parts of the Arab and Muslim world.

The Saudi crown prince responded
to the two leaders’ defiance by briefly arresting billionaire Jordanian
Palestinians businessman Sabih
al-Masri, who also has Saudi citizenship. “The Saudi detention of Masri was
a crude but brutal political message to…King Abdullah and…President Mahmoud
Abbas on how to behave on the Jerusalem issue and regional alignments. Riyadh
wanted to signal to the Jordanian and Palestinian leaderships that it could
swiftly cripple their economies and trigger existential crises in which banks
would suffer terminal runs, the governments would fail to pay their employees,
and the economies would sputter to a halt,” said Middle East scholar and
analyst Rami
G. Khouri.

How Saudi Arabia and the UAE vote
could impact relations with the United States and the degree to which they are
sensitive to criticism of their conduct of the Yemen war, if they vote in
favour of the resolution and Mr. Trump acts on his threat. In another
indication of Saudi and UAE priorities, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khaled Ben
Ahmed hinted at the Gulf states abstaining in the UN vote in a move that
likely would contradict public opinion, Mr. Ben Ahmed, referring to Iran,
tweeted that “it’s not helpful to pick a fight with the USA over side issues
while we together fight the clear and present danger of The Theo-Fascist
Islamic republic.”

Saudi, UAE and Bahraini
willingness to break with a long-standing consensus in the Arab and Muslim
world would have likely been strengthened with the publication of Mr. Trump’s national
security strategy that, like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, prioritizes combating
“jihadist terrorists;” preventing the domination of “any power hostile to the
United States,” an apparent reference to Iran and Iranian-backed proxies; and
ensuring “a stable global energy market.”

The link between Israeli-Palestinian peace making and Iran,
and by extension Yemen, is, moreover, likely to become undeniable when Mr.
Trump next month must decide whether to uphold the 2015 international agreement
with Iran that put severe restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for
the lifting of sanctions.

Under US law, Mr. Trump has to certify Iranian compliance
every three months. In October, Mr. Trump refused to do so. He threatened to
pull out of the agreement if Congress failed to address the accord’s perceived
shortcomings within 60 days. Congress has refrained from acting on Mr. Trump’s
demand that Congress ensure that Iranian compliance involves accepting
restrictions on its ballistic missile program that is primarily designed to
counter perceived US and Israeli threats, and support of regional proxies. A study
by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) concluded that to
counter challenges posed by regional insurgencies, failing states and
extremism, Iran was likely to expand its weapons acquisition program to include
surface- and air-to-air missiles, advanced fighter aircraft, tanks, advanced
mines, and anti-ship cruise missiles.

Concern that proxies that fought in Syria could turn their
attention to Yemen was enhanced by Ali-Reza
Tavasol, a founder of the 20,000 man-strong Fatemiyoun Division, an Iranian-led Afghan
Shiite militia group. “Our war is an ideological war and does not recognize
geography and borders. Anywhere oppressed people need help, we will be present
there and assist them,” Mr. Tavasol said. Mr, Tavasol’s statement echoed earlier
remarks by Ismail
Ghani, the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, who asserted
that Fatemiyoun fighters did “not recognize borders to defend Islamic values.” Afghan
officials alleged that some Fatemiyoun fighters has already been dispatched
to Yemen.

At the end of the day, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry is being
fought on the back of the Yemenis who are paying a horrendous price. That is
unlikely to change as long as Saudi Arabia sees its struggle with Iran as an
existential battle. And to be fair to the Saudis, they have good reason to
perceive Iran as an existential threat. Not because Iran engages in asymmetric
warfare by using proxies, supporting groups like the Houthis or propping up the
regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

But because post 1979-Iran, even if t were to only sit back
and do nothing, poses an existential threat in much the same way that the
popular Arab revolts of 2011 posed an existential threat. Iran experienced,
alongside Russia, the 20th’s century only true revolution in which a
regime and a political system was overthrown. It was a revolution that toppled
a monarch and an icon of the United States. It was a revolution that introduced
an Islamic system of governance that has whatever limited degree of popular
sovereignty. That is the threat, it constitutes an alternative to an absolute
monarchy that claims religious legitimacy and is seeking to ensure its
survival.

And if that were not enough, Iran is one of three Middle
Eastern nations, that, irrespective of what state of disrepair they may be in,
have the building blocks to be regional powers. The other two are Turkey and
Egypt. They have large populations, huge domestic markets, battle-hardened
militaries, an industrial base, highly educated populations, geography and a
deep sense of identity rooted in empire and/or thousands of years of history. Saudi
Arabia has money and Mecca.

If Saudi Arabia and the UAE learnt a lesson during the era
of US President Barak Obama, it is that nothing is permanent and that countries
need to assert themselves. Yemen is an expression of that lesson. Mr. Trump has
given the kingdom and the emirates the umbrella they needed. Saudi regional
power is to a large extent dependent on an Iran that is hampered by US-led
efforts to contain it. Again, to be fair, the UAE has been better than the
Saudis at exploiting the opportunity.

Saudi Arabia has so far ended up with mud in its face. The
war in Yemen is backfiring and threatens to create even bigger challenges in
the longer term. In a toughening of US criticism of the kingdom’s conduct of
the war, Mr. Trump’s nominee for the post of the State Department’s legal
counsel, Jennifer
Newstead, suggested that Saudi Arabia could be violating U.S. and
international law by restricting the flow of humanitarian aid in Yemen. British
international development secretary Penny
Mordaunt issued a similar warning. A
determination that the kingdom is in violation would, amid widespread
international criticism of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen sparked by Saudi military
action, put at risk US support for the intervention, involving US assistance in
mid-air refuelling of Saudi and Emirati fighter planes, the provision of
precision-guided munitions, and the sharing of intelligence.

Moreover, with dissent repressed, it is difficult to gauge
what public opinion in the kingdom is. Prince Mohammed has so far delivered
long-overdue social changes but has yet to deliver on his economic reform
plans. There is good reason to question the degree to which he will be able to
deliver, not only because there are legitimate questions about his plans but
also because of the way he has gone about implementing them. The recent arrests
of scores prominent Saudis under the mum of an anti-corruption campaign and the
financial settlements being negotiated for their release raises questions about
what kind of checks and balances a new Saudi Arabia would offer and defy the
principle of the rule of law.

No doubt, Prince Mohammed is an enormously popular figure.
The problem is that he has created enormous expectations that have not been
managed. Moreover, 40 years of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism rooted in a
history of at least 200 years of ultra-conservative thought cannot be erased
with the stroke of a pen. Prince Mohammed’s social changes are as popular as
they are controversial.

In a recent survey, young Saudis said they wanted
change: they wanted to date women, they wanted to party, they wanted to drive
fast cars, and, yes, they wanted good paying jobs. When asked whether they
realized that those same rights would apply to their sisters, they pulled back.
In a recent illustration of contradictory attitudes, a Saudi
beauty queen withdrew from a Miss Arab World contest after being attacked
and threatened online. Similarly, Saudis want jobs but are unprepared for a
merit-driven labour market rather than one that offers cushy government jobs.

The long and short of all of this is that the war in Yemen
cannot be seen independent of the convulsions of change that have enveloped the
Middle East in a convoluted and often violent process with no end in sight. The
wars in Syria and Iraq are dying down. Yet, without policies that ensure that
all groups in society feel that they have a stake in society, the seeds for
renewed conflict are being sown. The same is ultimately also true for Yemen.
Whatever one thinks of Mr. Obama, he got it right when he told journalist Jeffrey
Goldberg that Saudi Arabia will have to learn to share the Middle East with
Iran.

Saturday, December 16, 2017

US president Donald J. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem potentially
sets the stage for a controversial American effort to resolve the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates.

The United States and the two Gulf states see a US peace
plan-in-the-making as a way of paving the way for more overt cooperation with
Israel in confronting Iran, whom they accuse of destabilizing the Middle East.

In doing so, the United States, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are
navigating a minefield. Protests against Mr. Trump’s move have so far
underplayed the link between the fight against Iran and apparent Saudi
and UAE willingness to compromise on minimal Palestinian demands for peace
that include East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

That could change as US plans for an Israeli-Palestinian
peace crystalize and the link to the Saudi-Iranian rivalry manifests itself. At
the core of the US draft plan is reportedly the controversial suggestion that Abu
Dis, a Palestinian village bordering on Jerusalem, rather than East Jerusalem, would
be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Perceived Saudi and UAE backing for the proposal that is
reportedly being drafted by Mr. Trump’s aide and son-in-law, Jared Kushner,
would bring anger
at alleged Arab complicity to the forefront, fuel the persistent anti-US
and anti-Israel protests, and complicate the campaign by the US and the two
Gulf states against Iran.

The notion that Abu Dis could replace East Jerusalem has
been around for almost two decades. It failed to garner support during the 2000
Camp David Israeli-Palestinian peace talks because Arab and Palestinian
leaders rejected it. Saudi and UAE eagerness to work with Israel coupled with Mr.
Trump’s seemingly unqualified support for the Jewish state has given the
proposal a new lease on life.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE, despite their official condemnation
of Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem, have signalled a willingness to be
more flexible by continuing to support Mr. Kushner’s effort and playing a
low-key, if not dampening, role in Arab and Muslim rejection of the president’s
move.

Ironically, differences among Arab leaders about how to
respond to Mr. Trump’s Jerusalem decision may have temporarily prevented Saudi
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, from adding Palestine to a string
of failed foreign policy moves aimed at escalating the kingdom’s proxy war
with Iran. Prince Mohammed’s devastating military intervention in Yemen, botched
effort to force Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign, and hamstrung boycott
of Qatar have backfired and only strengthened the Islamic republic’s regional
influence.

Inadvertently, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and
Jordanian King Abdullah did Prince Mohammed a favour when they reportedly
rejected pressure
by Prince Mohammed not to participate in this week’s summit of Islamic
countries in Istanbul. Saudi Arabia was represented by a lower level Cabinet
official. Mr. Abbas may have further shielded the Saudi leader when his refusal
to further accept the United States as a mediator was adopted by the summit.

The two leaders’ stand coupled with the Islamic summit’s
rejection of Mr. Trump’s move make it more difficult for Saudi Arabia and the
UAE to endorse any resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that does not
recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. The problem is that
Prince Mohammed and his UAE counterpart, Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, run the
risk of misreading or underestimating public anger and frustration in significant
parts of the Arab and Muslim world.

The link between Israeli-Palestinian peace making and Iran
is likely to become undeniable when Mr. Trump next month must decide whether to
uphold the 2015 international agreement with Iran that put severe restrictions
on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

Under US law, Mr. Trump has to certify Iranian compliance
every three months. In October, Mr. Trump refused to do so. He threatened to
pull out of the agreement if Congress failed to address the agreement’s
perceived shortcomings within 60 days. Congress has so far refrained from
acting on Mr. Trump’s demand. Mr. Trump wants Congress to ensure that Iranian compliance
involves accepting restrictions on its ballistic missile program and support of
regional proxies.

It is anybody’s guess what Mr. Trump will do. At first glance,
US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki
Haley’s presentation of Iranian missile parts as evidence of Tehran’s
support for Houthi rebels in Yemen and Iranian destabilization of the Middle
East would suggest that Mr. Trump is preparing to decertify Iran and possibly
withdraw from the agreement.

It could however also be an effort to project a tougher US
stance towards Iran while cooler heads in the administration prevail on Mr.
Trump to keep the agreement in place.

In either case, Mr. Trump and his Gulf allies are walking a
tightrope by fuelling suspicion that they are willing to compromise on minimal
Palestinian demands for peace in a bid to cater to Israel, a natural ally in
the fight against Iran.

In doing so, Mr. Trump and the Saudi and UAE crown princes
risk misreading not only the public mood but also Iranian influence and
intentions, particularly regarding the Islamic republic’s ability to control the
Houthi rebels. Ms. Haley’s evidence that was supplied by Saudi Arabia and the
UAE failed to convince many in the international community.

Ms. Haley’s missile parts display was prompted by the
Iranian-backed Houthis firing of a ballistic missile at Riyadh on November 4. It
remains unclear whether that missile was supplied by Iran, or possibly North
Korea, and when it was given to the Houthis – key questions that need to be answered
to determine possible Iranian culpability.

The Houthis, a fiercely independent actor who have
repeatedly demonstrated that they do not take orders from Tehran and at times ignore
its advice, could throw a monkey wrench into the fragile Middle East mix if
they make good on a threat to target not only Saudi but also Emirati cities. A missile
strike would no doubt provoke a harsh response, possibly involving a joint
US-Saudi-UAE strike against Iran rather than against the Houthis in Yemen.

Anger already aroused by Mr. Trump’s decision on Jerusalem potentially
could then turn against Arab leaders who would be seen to be cooperating with the
United States and willing to sacrifice Palestinian rights to work with Israel.

In short, it could open a can of worms in which public anger
is directed against multiple parties ranging from the United States to Israel
to Arab leaders to Iran and the Houthis and/or prove to be a perfect storm.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Talks
aimed at transferring US nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia serve as an
indicator of where the Saudi-Iranian rivalry is heading as well as the strength
of the informal Saudi-Israeli alliance against Iran. The possible transfer
could spark a new arms race in the Middle East and constitutes one explanation
why Saudi responses to President Donald J. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as
the capital of Israel were muted and limited to rhetorical statements.

Mr. Trump’s decision was perhaps most challenging for the
Saudis, who as custodians of Islam’s two holiest cities, would have been
expected to play a leading role in protecting the status of the city that is
home to the faith’s third holiest site. Saudi Arabia was represented at this
week’s summit
of Islamic countries in Istanbul that recognized East Jerusalem as the
capital of Palestine by its foreign minister, Adel al Jubeir, rather than the
king, crown prince or another senior member of the ruling family.

The difficulty for the Saudis is not only their close cooperation
with Israel, willingness to increasingly publicly hint at what long was a secret
relationship, and their position as the US’ closest friend in the Arab world, who
reportedly was willing to endorse a US
Israeli-Palestinian peace plan in the making that would fail to meet the
minimum demanded by Palestinians and Arab public opinion.

With Mr. Trump backing Saudi efforts to counter Iranian
influence in a swath of land stretching from Asia to the Atlantic coast of Africa
despite mounting US criticism of the kingdom’s conduct of its military
intervention in Yemen, Riyadh has a vested interest in maintaining its close
ties to Washington. While having been put in an awkward position, international
condemnation of Mr. Trump’s Jerusalem move has also increased Saudi leverage.

Mr. Trump’s support for Saudi Arabia as well as his
transactional approach to foreign policy that aims to further US business
interests holds out the promise of tipping the Middle East’s military balance
of power in favour of the kingdom.

In the president’s latest effort, his administration is weighing
allowing Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium as part of a deal that would ensure
that bids by Westinghouse
Electric Co. and other US companies to build nuclear reactors in the
kingdom are successful. Past US reluctance to endorse Saudi enrichment and
reprocessing of uranium has put purveyors of US nuclear technology at a
disadvantage.

Saudi Arabia
agreed with the US in 2008 not to pursue enrichment and reprocessing but
has since backed away from that pledge. “They wouldn’t commit, and it was a
sticking point,” said Max
Bergmann, a former special assistant to the undersecretary of state for
arms control and international security.

Testifying to Congress in November, Christopher
Ford, the US National Security Council’s senior director for weapons of
mass destruction and counterproliferation, refused to commit the Trump
administration to the US restrictions. The restrictions are “not a legal
requirement. It is a desired outcome.” Mr. Ford said. He added that the 2015 international
agreement with Iran that severely restricts the Islamic republic’s nuclear
program for at least a decade, made it more difficult for the United States to
insist on limiting other countries’ enrichment capabilities.

Saudi Arabia plans to construct 16 nuclear power reactors by
2030 at a cost of an estimated $100 billion. Officially, Saudi Arabia sees
nuclear power as a way of freeing up more oil for export in a country that has
witnessed dramatic increases in domestic consumption and contributing to
diversification of its economy. It would also enhance Saudi efforts to ensure parity
with Iran in the kingdom’s ability to enrich uranium and its quest to be the
Middle East’s long-term, dominant power.

Saudi Arabia has large uranium deposits of its own. In preparation
of requesting bids for its nuclear program, Saudi Arabia in October asked the
US, France, South Korea, Russia and China for preliminary information. In
addition to the United States, the kingdom has in recent years concluded a number
of nuclear-related understandings with China as well as with France, Pakistan,
Russia, South Korea and Argentina.

Mr. Trump’s apparent willingness to ease US restrictions
services his campaign
promise to revive and revitalize America’s nuclear industry and meet
competition from Russia and China. Saudi contracts are crucial for Westinghouse,
a nuclear technology pioneer whose expertise is used in more than half of the
world’s nuclear power plants. Westinghouse declared bankruptcy in March because
of delays in two US projects.

A deal that would lift US restrictions in return for
acquiring US technology could enmesh Saudi Arabia in bitter domestic political
battles in Washington evolving around alleged Russian interference in the
election that brought Mr. Trump to office. Controversial Trump campaign aide
and short-lived national security advisor Michael
Flynn sought to convince Israel to accept the kingdom’s nuclear program as
part of his efforts to promote Russian nuclear interests in the Middle East.

Mr. Trump’s willingness, against the backdrop of uncertainty
about his readiness to uphold US adherence to the 2015 agreement with Iran, could
unleash an arms race in the Middle East and North Africa. Mr. Trump recently
refused to certify to Congress that Iran was compliant with the agreement.

Dropping restrictions on Saudi enrichment could not only
fuel Saudi-Iranian rivalry that has wreaked havoc across the region, but also
encourage other recipients of US nuclear technology to demand similar rights.
The United Arab Emirates and Egypt have accepted restrictions on enrichment in
their nuclear deals with US companies as long as those limitations were imposed
on all countries in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia has long been suspected of having an interest
in ensuring that it would have the ability to develop a military nuclear
capability if ever deemed necessary. For decades, Saudi cooperation with
nuclear power Pakistan has been a source of speculation about the kingdom’s
ambition.

Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States, Husain
Haqqani, asserted that Saudi Arabia’s close ties to the Pakistani military and
intelligence during the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s gave the
kingdom arms’ length access to his country’s nuclear capabilities.

“By the 1980s, the Saudi ambassador was a regular guest of
A. Q. Khan” or Abdul Qadeer Khan, the controversial nuclear physicist and
metallurgical engineer who fathered Pakistan's atomic bomb,” Mr. Haqqani said
in an interview.

Similarly, retired Pakistani Major General Feroz Hassan
Khan, the author of a semi-official history of Pakistan’s nuclear program, has
no doubt about the kingdom’s interest.

“Saudi Arabia provided generous financial support to
Pakistan that enabled the nuclear program to continue, especially when the
country was under sanctions," Mr. Khan said in a separate interview. Mr.
Khan was referring to US sanctions imposed in 1998 because of Pakistan’s
development of a nuclear weapons capability. He noted that at a time of
economic crisis, Pakistan was with Saudi help able “to pay premium prices for
expensive technologies.”

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International
Security (ISIS) said in a report
earlier this year that
it had uncovered evidence that future Pakistani “assistance would not involve
Pakistan supplying Saudi Arabia with a full nuclear weapon or weapons; however,
Pakistan may assist in other important ways, such as supplying sensitive
equipment, materials, and know-how used in enrichment or reprocessing.”

The report said it was unclear whether “Pakistan and Saudi
Arabia may be cooperating on sensitive nuclear technologies in Pakistan. In an
extreme case, Saudi Arabia may be financing, or will finance, an unsafeguarded
uranium enrichment facility in Pakistan for later use, either in a civil or
military program,” the report said.

The report concluded that the nuclear agreement with Iran dubbed
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) had “not eliminated the
kingdom’s desire for nuclear weapons capabilities and even nuclear weapons…
There is little reason to doubt that Saudi Arabia will more actively seek
nuclear weapons capabilities, motivated by its concerns about the ending of the
JCPOA’s major nuclear limitations starting after year 10 of the deal or sooner
if the deal fails,” the report said.

Rather than embarking on a covert program, the report
predicted that Saudi Arabia would, for now, focus on building up its civilian
nuclear infrastructure as well as a robust nuclear engineering and scientific
workforce. This would allow the kingdom to take command of all aspects of the
nuclear fuel cycle at some point in the future.

“The current situation suggests that Saudi Arabia now has
both a high disincentive to pursue nuclear weapons in the short term and a high
motivation to pursue them over the long term,” the Washington Institute said.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile